Chapter 4- Defining consciousness Flashcards
1
Q
The cognitive unconscious
A
- Mental activities below the level of awareness that
make cognition possible
-Briefly presented letters “CORN” or “CQRN” are both perceived as “CORN” - Aware of the products of cognition, but unaware of
the processes
-Perception, Memory, Language Processing, etc. - Engages in unconscious reasoning
-“This name seems familiar, so it must be someone famous.”
2
Q
What is consciousness?
A
- Moment‐to‐moment awareness of ourselves and
our environment - A state of awareness of sensations or ideas, such
that we can:
-Reflect on these sensations and ideas
-Know what it “feels like” to experience these
sensations and ideas
-Report to others that we are aware of these
sensations and ideas
3
Q
Two dimensions of consciousness
A
- Wakefulness (or Arousal)
-An individual’s degree of alertness. Controls the cycling of sleep and wakefulness - Awareness (or Clarity of Content)
-Monitoring of information from the environment and/or one’s own thoughts
4
Q
How to assess consciousness
A
- Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS)
- Experience Sampling Technique
- fMRI
-Daydreaming shows a widespread pattern of brain activation known as the default network
-Global Workspace Model
5
Q
Minimal Consciousness:
Unresponsiveness Wakefulness Syndrome
A
- “Wakefulness without awareness”
-Formerly referred to as vegetative state - In 1990, at the age of 26, Terri Schiavo suffered a brain injury and fell into a coma. After 10 years, her husband requested to terminate her life support, but her parents wanted to continue it.
- Medical tests showed that most of her brain was destroyed. Doctors agree that she could not possibly have been conscious. In 2005, Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed and she died.
6
Q
Moderate consciousness
A
- Freud’s term preconscious
- Tip‐of‐the‐tongue phenomenon
- This sort of consciousness is experienced
when we sleep; that is, we do not lose
awareness of the world around us when we
sleep
7
Q
Full consciousness
A
- Ebbs and flows throughout the day
- Flow
-State of involvement during which one loses a sense of
time and/or may forget where they are - Mindfulness
-Heightened awareness of the present moment
8
Q
Blindsight
A
Patient DB (Weiskrantz, 1986)
- Chronic & severe migraines; angiogram revealed an arteriovenous malformation at the right occipital pole
- “The excision is estimated to have extended approximately 6 cm anterior to the occipital pole and included the major portion of the calcarine cortex on the medial aspect of the [right] hemisphere” (Saunders et al. 1974)
- Reported seeing nothing in a blind field, but could point and move eyes to stimuli in blind field accurately
9
Q
Another example of blidnsight
A
- Accident at age 8 resulting in a large left medial occipital lesion & a smaller right parietal lesion
- Some plasticity (e.g., LGN V5 connections not seen in healthy controls (may represent new connections…)
- Could “see” strong motion signals
-Slow motion -> weak MT/v5 activity
-Fast Motion -> stronger MT/v5 activity
No residual V1 activity
10
Q
Implications
A
- Consciousness is not required for:
-Visual Perception
-Memory
-Motor Learning - Perception is not the same as visual awareness
- Amnesia can selectively impair explicit memory.
- Patients can learn new skills and show recognition
without awareness.
11
Q
Unconscious Judgments
A
- Fast, efficient, and reasonable
- Strongly guided by situations and habits
-Selections are often favored by familiarity - Difficult to “turn off”
- E.g. Ponzo illusion
12
Q
Priming
A
- Occurs when the response to a stimulus is influenced or facilitated by recent experience with that stimulus or a related stimulus
- Priming can influence how you perceive an object, the speed or ease with which you respond, and the choices you make
- E.g. semantic priming (bat and ball)
